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How Orange County Improved On-Time Public Services

After launching an online portal to facilitate filing and responding to service requests, the Orange County Public Works Department realized significant improvement in customer service.

With a population of more than 3 million, Orange County, California, is the sixth most populous county in the U.S. Home to many Fortune 500 companies, colleges, and universities, it is also an attractive tourist destination, thanks to its sunny beaches and the popular Disneyland resort. Nearly 800 square miles in area, the county presents public agencies with unique challenges in day-to-day governance, particularly when it comes to delivering infrastructure services.

The Orange County Public Works Department is responsible for providing many of these services, including flood channel management, sidewalk maintenance, water pollution response, and street maintenance. Like many other public agencies, the department faces the challenge of responding to and reporting on service requests with limited resources.

Until early 2017, the process for filing and responding to requests was often burdensome. A resident with a service issue had to call a help desk or send an email after completing an online form.¹ Often, requests did not include required geographic information. County staff would use multiple sources to conduct research, then add the location information to the record prior to sending it to inspection and maintenance staff.

Residents were contacted by staff throughout the life cycle of the service issue, but often had to call to check the status of a request. To provide a status update, staff would frequently need to email or call multiple staff members. Duplicate requests submitted by residents could further complicate matters.

The department recognized this process was not optimally using the county’s limited resources and that customer service could be improved. In April 2017, it launched myOC eServices, a web- and mobile-enabled portal that not only streamlines the service request process for residents, but also modernizes department approaches to handling inquiries and managing resources.

The myOC eServices tool provides residents with an easy way to navigate county services. Residents visiting the online portal first select the service they require. Next, they identify their location on an interactive map, upload photos or files, add comments, and submit the application. The inquiry then flows to the appropriate service area, where a central team uses data visualization to overlay the request onto a map that is linked to the county’s geographic information system.

This new data visualization capability allows department managers to identify bottlenecks or pockets of high activity—for example, an area receiving a high volume of graffiti complaints—and make data-informed decisions about where to assign staff.

In addition, fieldworkers can now access information about new complaints on their mobile devices, allowing them to more quickly respond. They can also make updates on progress, keeping residents better informed, and close out requests when the work is completed, automatically notifying residents and department managers. The portal also instills a level of proactivity by allowing field and on-call staff to enter new service requests during field inspections.

Within four months of launching, myOC eServices was showing positive results. By August 2017, the department’s average service resolution time was four days, down from an average of 15 to 20 days in April, and the average on-time completion rate was 72 percent, up from 57 percent in April.²

The department is now able to perform quantitative analysis to support executive-level decisions regarding key partnerships, resource allocation, and organizational structure to efficiently deliver high-quality customer service. The second phase of the project, targeting services such as permit applications, fee payment, and weights and measures compliance, is expected to be deployed this year.³

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